Presentation

Vanessa López is originally from Chile and was assigned male at birth. She migrated with her family to Sweden in 1985. Growing up Vanessa never felt comfortable with societys expectations of being a boy which eventually lead to her starting transisioning to a woman at the age of 16.

At that time, Swedish law didn’t allow a legal sex change without having sex reassignment surgery, which lead to Vanessa going through with the procedure when she was 20 years old.

As a young woman she worked as a model, gogo dancer, and also being involved in the fashion buisness in cities as London, Madrid, Ibiza, Stockholm, Copenhagen, New York and Los Angeles.

Vanessa was the first openly transsexual in Scandinavia to participate in a reality show – Big Brother, Sweden 2011. When the show started she was told from the producers to keep her background a secret to the other participants. She raised a lot of attentionfrom the male participants of the house, and after being eliminated Vanessa caused a grand national commotion and was seen in magazines, newspapers and on television. Along with her fame Vanessa started her career as a writer and lecturer. In her autobiography, ”I’ve changed my mind” (Jag har ångrat mig) she writes in detail about her transision and why the book is titeled the way it is.

Vanessa is also involved with different support groups for transgender youth, wanting to influence society she wrote the norm cirtical childrens book ”Det är jag som är Mickan” (I am Mickan) which tells the story about a young transgender person.

Vanessa won the Miss Trans Star International contest in 2015, representing her native country Chile.

A beauty pageant that works for the visibility of the transgender community.